This invention relates generally to musical scores and more particularly to mechanisms used to map a specific musical chord to an appropriate chord in another key.
In 1883, Outre-Mer commented that "Music is the universal language of mankind". Although this is readily accepted, the creation of the language in a harmonic and pleasing manner has often eluded Man. One of the major problems with the creation of pleasing music lies in the musical score itself. When "Gradual", the first documented printed music, was first printed in 1472, the variety of instruments and songs was much more limited than they are today.
With this expanding variety of instruments and songs comes the need to play songs in different keys. Not all voices and instruments are able to play a song in a score's printed key. This forces the singers and the players to either "guess" at the proper translation to their key, or to attempt the song in the score's key. In either case, the result is far from optimal and pleasing.
This is particularly true with chords which are the sounding together of separate tones. These chords produce a harmony which is an extremely complex study within music and constitute what is referred to as the vertical or perpendicular dimension of music (melody being the horizontal aspect).
Although a seven-toned chord is possible, in practice, most music uses a three-toned chord commonly called a triad. Chords always relate to the key-scale of the music. That is, a C major key denotes the specific chords which are available.
The movement of a musical score from one key to another is not a simple task. Rather, it requires a great deal of work in moving the chords from their source key (in which the score is written) to the targeted key. To do this translation, the musician is forced into a time consuming and laborious task of manually mapping each chord into the new key.
Because of the complexity called for in this task, and the time so required, many musicians simply "guess" or do an "approximation" and hope that the resulting sound is acceptable.
It is clear from the foregoing that there is a significant need to create an apparatus to assist musicians in the translation of music from one key to another while making the process simple to complete accurately.